


Secrets

by ajfessler



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Post-Skyfall, Protective Q, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 15:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11923851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajfessler/pseuds/ajfessler
Summary: Secrets. Everyone has them, everyone wants them. Some are just worth more that others.





	Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> This is complete for the moment. Depending on reception and drive I'll post more as I write it.
> 
> Comments, critiques, art, and podfics welcome.
> 
> -Aj

Secrets. It always came down to secrets. 

Everyone had them, and everyone wanted them. Some secrets were worth a great deal. Mostly, secrets were useless things and weren’t worth the effort of obtaining them. Not even the lives lost for them. It wasn’t like her Majesty’s Secret Service needed to know what Anne Smith from Dublin’s favorite color was after all. 

But there were some secrets which were worth the effort. Some secrets which were matters of national importance. And those were safeguarded by the Technical Services Staff, quaintly referred to as Q branch, specifically the executive head who in any given incarnation was always denoted by the moniker Q. 

The current Q, number six, sat at his desk in the farthest corner of a repurposed underground tube line twiddling a pen around his fingers. It wasn’t like it was going to explode, they didn’t do that sort of things these days. At least, Q admitted in the privacy of his own mind, they tried not to. They tried to stick to the reputable and useful gadgetry. Radios, guns, cars, body armor. The usual gauntlet. A flicker on his screen drew his wandering attention. 007 again, jumping off rooftops. The minions would call for him shortly. They always did when Bond went off-script. He supposed it should be flattering in a way. 

He sipped at his cup of Earl Grey and decided it was going to be a long night. Best to resign himself to start with and avoid disappointment later on when he never made it outside the glass doors of his minuscule domain. 

With a weary sigh, he leaned back into his ergonomic office chair. Wishing, not for the first time or for the last, that it wasn’t so comfortable. It was times like this that he missed the previous two holders of Q. Boothroyd and Cleese had both preferred a painfully stiff ancient wooden monstrosity of a desk chair that had started its service before Q branch had even been a glimmer in the eyes of the British government. He rather missed that chair these days. But the chair, like his most recent mentor, had perished in the explosion that had taken most of Q branch with it. The same explosion which had seen him field promoted to branch executive because there was no one else half as qualified. 

With no one to provide a proper turnover, the newly instated Q had simply done his best to run things the way he’d watched for a decade past. That was the idea at least. Except once the dust had settled from Silva and the death of Olivia Mayfield had been attended to, the idiots with the power to be obnoxious without any knowledge of what they blathered about started asking questions. Demanding answers that couldn’t be given. He was the Quartermaster, officially both his identity and his position didn’t exist. Q had spent a good portion of time ensuring it was so.

In their defense though, Q hadn’t known any better than they had but he’d seen enough through his two apprenticeships to blow smoke up their metaphorical asses. Fake it until you make it and all that. How old is he? They asked, a sneer in their voice that cut so much deeper than Bond’s dispassionate glare. Can he even shave? At least they didn’t mention the occasional break of spots he suffered as a direct result of poor dietary choices. What’s a boy doing in charge of an entire branch of MI6? Well, Q had asked himself the very same question day in and day out as he trudged to work from his tiny closet of an apartment.

They were the same questions and concerns that Bond had brought up at their first meeting. But somehow from these ancient men full of self-importance the queries were almost unbearably harsh. Q deflected them as simply and as patiently as possible. There was no one else alive with the appropriate knowledge of Q branch to take the position. That was just a fact. Most every technician working there had been brought in after the explosion. 

Still, they spent a week questioning his qualification, his tenure at MI6, his apprenticeships under both previous Qs. A week keeping him sitting in a conference room while they interrogated and belittled him by turns. The pompous, self-important bureaucrats had just decided that he was too young, too inexperienced, and too unwavering in his loyalty (Q had refused point blank to even consider the Double O’s as just another requisition item to be used, abused and discarded when no longer efficient and that was a truck load of “Not good, mate. Not good at all.”) to maintain the post when the Archivists made their appearance. The good old boys of the board were informed in no uncertain terms that they had no applicable say in the appointment of the Quartermaster and had absolutely no influence on policy within the branch itself. Q branch for all intents and purposes was a subsidiary of MI6 and was required per the original charter to self-govern. So, ready or not, they had been forced to accept him as the latest and greatest they were going to get, Olivia’s last act of sadistic kindness. 

That was where his life had gotten interesting, where he’d learned things he never knew he never knew. Q had thought he’d gotten the hierarchy of MI6 down. Learned the chain of command as it were in the event of a crisis. So on and so forth. Except, he hadn’t at all. A fact that was made clear after the reading of the wills. Two letters had been delivered to him. One a generic _to the Quartermaster of MI6, whoever he or she shall be_ and the other address specifically to him. Both in a handwriting that Q knew almost better than his own. He had, after all, spent most of the previous five years learning how to dissect it in a never ending search for vocabulary and context. 

In it the truths that Q had thought were absolute came under abuse and outright criticism. His predecessor hadn’t been particularly fond of M, either incarnation apparently, and several of the decisions that had been made were lambasted in a manner that would have caused a civil war within the confines of MI6 had they been voiced aloud. In life, Q hadn’t felt it was worth the headache to argue with either his predecessor or with either M. Sometimes the best course of action was one that didn’t make waves. Mallory, for all his faults and stipulations on following regulations and procedures, was a force to be reckoned with when the occasion called for it. The main point of both letters though was to provide Q with the starting clues on where to find everything he’d need to know to be Quartermaster of Q branch, MI6. 

That had been six weeks prior. Q slouched down into his too comfortable chair. The goose chase had opened doors he’d never known even existed. Literally in some cases. The elevator system had been programmed to read his thumb print and deliver him down into the Quartermasters apartments. Lavishly outfitted rooms below the public levels that hadn’t been updated since the later part of the previous century. The 800 square foot space had only been the start of his rabbit hole as he found out. 

After the discovery of the apartment had come breaking into the library.

And what a room that had been. Hermetically sealed, four foot thick concrete walls reinforced with steel beams every two feet, three separate locks, two coded riddles that gained him the combinations to the locks, and what Q had thought might be biometric scanning equipment that may or may not be attached to the world's largest stun gun. His healthy fear of the machinery had been the only thing to keep him from investigating. Every answer had been provided, repeated as senseless advice over the course of his tenure as the Q2. 

Plain, white washed walls held only shelves, overhead fluorescent lighting fixtures ran in two parallel lines providing harsh illuminance. The only spots that jarringly disrupted the utilitarian aesthetic was a red Persian carpet, a well-worn leather arm chair and a single pedestal of hand carved stone. The eight by eight-foot room was apparently equipped to withstand the worst mankind could possibly throw at each other without sacrificing attention to detail.

The shelves had been handcrafted specifically to hold stiff leather binders. Along the front of each edge were carved oak leaves. There were exactly twenty sets of the binders. Each set slightly varied in color to distinguish them from their fellows. Each a record beginning just shortly after World War II as annotated on their spines in flaking gold leaf. 

Along the bottom most two shelves there were binders containing unsorted documentation that, if Q had a guess, dated back to the first world war. These were unlabelled by gold leaf and instead had a small brass plate attached the shelves themselves. The binders that resided there sat with an air of neglect. As if they hadn’t been touched since the moment they’d been installed. 

The next set of shelves held rolled blueprints, and the shelves had been divided into cubes. Each horizontal set pertained to a decade of invention and innovation. There were no carvings inlaid on this shelf, just brass plates at shoulder height indicating which decade resided in which cube set. It wasn’t the most efficient setup, and if Q had any guesses, he’d say that they were already running out of space to expand. During his initial pursual of the space, he’d set the question aside. There was time for him to figure out what to do about the blueprints later after he’d found the answers to his questions and after he’d finished settling into life as Q.

The final set of shelves had been decorated with images of stags and ravens in delicate twining patterns. They had contained texts on history, economics, business practices and obsolete MI6 directives, procedures, and regulations. Each carefully labeled, organized on individual shelves by topic and more than a few had their leather bindings shined to a gloss from heavy use. Q had gathered from that first slow perusal that these were the tools of his trade that would ensure he had the answers to questions that couldn’t be asked of his fellow executives. Q branch was separate and individual. The Archivists had already informed him that there would be no one at MI6 that would have any knowledge of his department to usefully advise him. That the rest of the organization operated on an entirely different set of habitude as they’d been informed often enough by his predecessors. 

In the end, it had been the pedestal which had drawn his attention initially. Mostly due to the note card which had merely stated: start here. The card resting on a closed leather bound book that had been titled simply as: _The Quartermaster’s Annul_. It was well worn, with creases in the leather where it had been left open too long, there were folded corners and stains discoloring the ends of the pages. The weight had also been surprising when he’d picked it up to settle down in the armchair. Acknowledging the subtle cue that the information in this library was not to be removed for any purpose. Q had settled into reading and what a read it had been. Time had quickly lost all sense of meaning as he ingested the history, conception, and purpose with which Q branch operated. Blatantly exposed yet, insidiously hidden all the same. 

In that slim volume of no more than four centimeters in width, a wealth of knowledge was imparted in the particular brand of unimpressed articulation universal to the Quartermasters. Every detail was painstakingly printed, and from time to time there were handmade annotations denoting a change due to circumstances. Once or twice a full post-it note of the information and appropriate reference. Q had devoured it. Here were the answers to his questions. Here was the history of his branch that seemed to be lacking in every other publication. Here were the directives and standards with which he would be required to adhere to for daily operation objectives. Here was the organization through which he could train and hire new technicians. 

It was only once he’d started getting cramps in his legs from lack of movement that Q mark his place and let his curiosity of the leather binders take precedence. He commenced at what seemed the beginning of them. Medium in thickness and settled to the right most position on the top most shelf and let it fall open naturally as his eyes scanned over the rest. Noting which seemed to have been handled most recently and which hadn’t been touched according to the fine layer of dust that was accumulated. 

He’d nearly dropped the binder when his gaze had finally sweep downward and landed unerringly on a glossy two and a half by a four-centimeter picture. Eve Moneypenny looked up at him with a tiny smile. Her expression seemed to challenge him with do your worst while her shoulders were settled in resignation. His fingers shook as they brushed the image. Eyes scanning the personnel sheet it was attached to Q felt his stomach drop in horror. Eve Moneypenny as he knew here was merely the sixth in the secession. Once she’d been distinguished as Abby Knight, a bright student with unprecedented potential in the political spheres.

The need to know who resided in the remaining binders surged through him like a wildfire. Sharp, fast and all consuming. 

With a mind to the thought that these were the very last records of the individuals who he worked most closely in hand with, Q looked through every file. Carefully memorizing names to faces that had been willingly given up to become something that was both less and more all at once. To become an anonymous code name for the greater good. In those binders, he found every Double O with a multitude of faces for each of the fifteen positions, four William Tanners, five separate M’s (of which Mallory was missing, he’d have to correct that as soon as possible), and two R’s. Apparently, the Quartermaster’s assistant wasn’t a position that routinely required filling. In light of the Q2 program, Q could understand why there had been so few Rs. 

He’d collapsed in a heap leaned against the shelves, with tears blurring his vision, when he’d gone through the Q binder. There were his mentors. Smiling and looking so alive, so young. Boothroyd had been taken by old age, and that had been hard enough. Few enough people in Q’s life had ever accepted him without complaint or request for a change in behaviors. Boothroyd had not only done so but done it in a manner that had been affectionate and challenging all at the same time. Cleese had shown him the ins and outs of Q branch, but it had been Boothroyd who’d convinced Q into staying after his mandatory five-year term of service had been completed.

Q snorted, he’d never been particularly good at following the rules and had once upon a time had a bet with a lover to see if he could get away with breaking every law in existence in Britain. He’d gotten caught by MI6 long before he’d managed it.

Ignoring his shaking fingers as they gently traced over the exasperated look staring up from the photo, Q let himself miss those men. Allowed the ache of loss free rein to bloom and flourish. Here in this secret, safe shelter of secrets, Q let himself grieve. The first fat drop that fell with a hollow splat jarred him into motion. It wouldn’t do to ruin the records of who these brave men and women had once been. It had fully dawned on him then, just why he was given command of Q branch. It wasn’t just that he was a fresh breath of air, a step out of the ancient box of real world innovation and into the much sharper world of computers. These were his secrets. This was the reason and honor of the Quartermasters position. He’d read it, in the Annul, and hadn’t quite understood what the dry wording had meant by keep and protect the secrets of personhood for influential and mandatory personnel. Just like his identity, who they had been had been was erased and replaced by a facade. A sudden thought occurring forced a sharp humorless laugh past his lips. The Double O’s made more sense now. Both their unquestioned disregard for their own lives and the willful disobedience to their handlers. 

What did life matter when you were just a name and a number after all? 

Q took another sip of his tea as he observed his latest handler candidate unsuccessfully try to direct 007 past an appallingly obvious trap. A smile curved his lips upwards when the exasperated demand “Put Q on” made an appearance. Another sip of tea as he waited for the summons, it wouldn’t do to let them know he was always watching when it came to the Double O’s. After all, he mused, these were his secrets and it was his sacred duty to protect them, even the stubborn ones.


End file.
